Content principles are a short set of statements describing what an organisation believes good content should do, used to guide decisions when several reasonable choices compete. They sit between strategy and day-to-day craft: more specific than a mission, less detailed than a style guide. “Start with what the reader needs to do” is a principle; “use sentence case for headings” is a style rule.
They borrow from a longer tradition of design principles. Dieter Rams’s ten principles for good design, set out while he led design at Braun, showed how a few memorable statements could guide a whole body of work. The UK Government Digital Service’s design principles, published in 2012 and opening with “Start with user needs”, made the form familiar in digital teams, and content principles apply the same idea to words, structure and publishing.
Why it matters for content
Principles connect strategy with daily work. They can guide briefs, critiques, governance and prioritisation without prescribing one answer for every situation. When teams disagree, a principle lets them test the decision against an agreed commitment rather than preference or seniority, which matters most when the person asking for another homepage banner outranks the person arguing against it.
Good principles are memorable, specific and usable. “Include the right people for the right reasons” changes how a review process works. “Create great content” changes nothing, because nobody set out to create dreadful content. One test is whether a sensible organisation could choose the opposite. “Maintain what exists before publishing more” is a real choice that some teams would reject, so it can settle arguments. Each principle needs a short explanation and an example of what it changes in practice.
Useful principles reflect real tensions: user needs over organisational structure, sustainable maintenance over constant publication, evidence over assumption. Too many become wallpaper. A short set that leaders and practitioners cite is worth more than an inspiring page nobody can recall, and principles earn their keep when someone uses them to say no.
How AI changes the picture
Principles can guide AI-assisted work by shaping prompts, review criteria and system behaviour. They express priorities that style rules don’t capture: when to refer someone to a person, how much certainty to claim, what to leave out.
Abstract statements need concrete examples before a model can apply them. AI may read “be human” as chatty filler or “be bold” as permission for unsupported certainty. Pairing each principle with examples, limits and source requirements makes it operational, and the exercise often improves the principles for human readers too.
AI can check drafts against principles and flag likely conflicts, but people still decide how commitments apply when they pull in different directions or when the consequences are serious. Principles also bear on the decision to use AI in the first place. An organisation committed to evidence over assumption needs a view on generated content that nobody has checked.
Questions people ask
- How are principles different from a style guide?
Principles guide decisions and priorities. A style guide gives detailed conventions for language and presentation, and its rules should be traceable to the principles. If a principle says to respect people’s time, the style guide might set out how to front-load the answer.
- How many should there be?
Three to five is a sensible starting point rather than a rule. Test them against real decisions: if two principles always give the same answer, combine them; if a recurring tension has nothing to settle it, add or revise one.
- Who creates them?
A representative group, informed by audience evidence, organisational purpose and the people who make and maintain content. Principles written by leadership alone tend to describe aspirations, while those written only by practitioners may lack the authority to settle arguments. Testing drafts against recent disputes exposes vague wording quickly.
- Can principles contradict each other?
They often pull in different directions, which is part of their value. Rank them, or explain how to balance them, rather than pretending every value wins equally.
Learn more
- MnDOT content principles – a concrete set covering refinement, deletion, findability and evidence rather than vague aspirations.
- Five principles of good content design – a public-sector and non-profit perspective on findable, clear, connected, human and helpful content; one usable framework, not a universal set.
- Design Principles – a free library of more than 1,600 real-world design principles from around 200 organisations and individuals, useful for comparing how others phrase and explain theirs.
- The content manifesto – the principles behind Contentious’ broad view of content as relationship, infrastructure and a force for change.